Conventionally, a fishing reel which winds the line on the spool by rotating the rotary frame while moving the spool shaft in reciprocation is called a spinning reel and has been well-known.
The spinning reel is box-shaped to have a front wall and side walls. One through bore is provided at the front wall and insertably supports a tubular driven shaft and the spool shaft. The rotary frame is supported to one axial end of the driven shaft projecting frontward from the front wall and the spool is supported to one axial end of the spool shaft projecting frontward from the same. A drive shaft having a handle bar is supported to one side wall at a right angle with the driven shaft and spool shaft, and a transmission mechanism for transmitting rotation of the handle bar from the drive shaft to the rotary frame through the driven shaft is housed within the reel body.
The transmission mechanism comprises a master gear supported to the drive shaft and a pinion supported to the driven shaft, the pinion engaging with the master gear to transmit the rotation of the handle bar to the rotary frame with a speed increase.
A reciprocation mechanism is provided which comprises a traverse groove in the outer periphery of a part of the spool shaft within the reel body and an engaging member at a part of the driven shaft within the same, so that the engaging member rotates following the rotation of driven shaft and moves the spool shaft in reciprocation longitudinal of the reel body.
Such reciprocation mechanisn performs smooth reciprocation of the spool, but causes the rotary frame to rotate in synchronism with longitudinal reciprocation of the spool because the engaging member rotates together with the driven shaft, causing the line wound on the spool to become heaped so it is not uniform on a trunk of the spool.
Hence, the line, when drawn-out for casting, is subjected to an excessive resistance, or a heap of wound line is loosened and the line snarls, thereby reducing the casting distance.
To overcome this problem the Development Department of the assignee of this application to the inventor, has developed a fishing reel which provides ring teeth smaller in diameter than a master ring gear engageable with a pinion, an association shaft which has an association gear engageable with the smaller diameter ring teeth and is supported rotatably to the aforesaid driven shaft, and an engaging member engageable with the traverse groove and supported to the assiciation shaft, thereby avoiding synchronization of the rotation of the rotary frame with the longitudinal movement of the spool.
Such a reel, however, provides at the master gear both the larger diameter ring teeth and smaller diameter ring teeth, so that the master gear should be larger in diameter in consideration of its strength which leads to a large-sized reel body having therein the larger master gear resulting in a high manufacturing cost and an increased weight of the reel. Also, the smaller diameter ring teeth formed radially inwardly of the master gear and the association gear coaxial with the spool shaft cannot rotate at significantly different speeds in consideration of strength and size as a whole.
Furthermore, since the axis of the spool shaft intersects at a right angle with that of the drive shaft, the drive shaft cannot be journalled to both side walls, whereby the reel cannot be formed in a right- or left-hand handle type in which the handle bar is mountable onto either axial end of the drive shaft.